National Public Radio, partially funded by US tax payers, is working daily to promote military intervention in Syria. Its coverage of the largely US and ‘Western’ (this being the word that London, Washington, Paris and Tel Aviv use to refer to their bloc of closely aligned powers) instigated conflict has been decidedly one-sided in favour of the so-called rebels who are trying to topple the Syrian government. NPR works with the Obama Administration to push their anti-Syrian and anti-Russian positions while supporting the march towards war. They eagerly report on propaganda videos and wild claims made by the anti-government forces. The ‘anti-Assad’ feeling of the population is exaggerated. The plight of Syria’s Christians, Alawites and other religious minorities – who are protected by the Assad regime and have suffered terribly at the hands of the rebels – is rarely discussed in detail and never given as much weight as the grievances of the anti-Assad forces. US and NATO efforts to further cripple the Syrian people with sanctions are reported in positive terms while actions by China and Russia to block these sanctions and slow down the march toward war are reported negatively.

The primary supporters in the US Federal Government of war against Syria are neo-conservatives and super-hawks like Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Joe Lieberman. In NPR’s reporting on the efforts by hawks to get the US involved in yet another war of choice, the disasters of Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are rarely if ever put in context and offered as a likely outcome if the US becomes more directly involved militarily. In Somalia the US has helped multiple sides, supported an invasion and contributed greatly to the creation of the current chaos there. In Iraq the US-supported Shia largely cleansed the Christians and other small religious sects – who had been protected by the Hussein government – from the country while waging a long, bloody civil war. In Libya the US-backed rebels committed numerous atrocities. The country is divided up amongst warring tribes and roving bands of militias. In Afghanistan a  decade-long US occupation has failed to resolve or construct anything lasting or positive. The central government of that country controls little outside the capital without the US military. That same central government has demonstrated itself grossly incompetent and corrupt. As well, the war there, as was almost inevitable given the ethnic make-up of the region, has spread beyond the borders of Afghanistan and has turned the vast majority of Pakistanis against the United States. In short, the US has destabilised much of the region, created chaos and supported murderous and corrupt regimes that persecute Christians and other religious minorities. US tax payers have paid trillions of dollars to achieve these disastrous results. And yet listening to NPR and other US media outlets one would think that the US wars and occupations of the last decade or so have been largely successful and that only those opposed to ‘democracy’ and humanitarian efforts oppose the plans of Graham, McCain and Lieberman for yet another US war in the region.

Tags: mccain graham lieberman, national public radio, npr, pro-war, syria, us intervention

This entry was posted on July 22, 2012 at 10:02 am and is filed under News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.